3rd at noon eastern on book tv on c-span 2. weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday, american history tv documents america's story, and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span 2 comes from these television companies and more, including charter communications. >> charter is proud to be recognized as one of the best internet providers, and we're just getting started. building 100,000 miles of new infrastructure to reach those who need it most. >> charter communications,along with these television companies support c-span 2 as a public service. >> rachel steer is the author of four books and many articles and

reviews. her current book is magnificent disrupter. she teaches at the theater school at depaul university. our moderator is the author of seven books, three historical novels, and four biographies and a play. her writing which focuses on women's lives has been praised for combining rich story telling and literary grace with deep research to provide -- to bring alive worlds varied of jazz aged paris and 19th century chicago, paris, and disco era manhattan. her books have been translated into several languages, and she has been a judge for prominent literary contests. as a journalist, she's written for many publications, including the new york times, the "wall street journal," the chicago tribune, the los angeles times, the smithsonian, and town and country. excuse me, rachel's book will be available for purchase outside the black curtains afterward.

we will have a signing right behind it. i turn the rest of the program over to you. >> thank you. can everybody hear me? thank you for coming. betty as you probably know is a monumental figure in the history of feminism. her best-selling book "the feminine mystique" was widely credited with sparking second wave feminism when it was published in 1963 and sold more than a million copies. she co founded the national organization for women and the national women's caucus, but she was also a difficult person with an abrasive personality, and in her lifetime, she was a very controversial figure.

>> her book is the first betty friedan biography in 25 years, and it's based on rachel's intends, exhaustive research and archives, and more than 80 interviews. it will be officially published on tuesday, and all of the prepublication reviews have been great. i think i would like to start with rachel reading a little bit from the book to give you a taste of what it's about. >> thank you so much for that introduction, and introduction to betty. the section that am going to read from as gioia mention, betty was one of the cofounders of the national organization for women which is the largest women's organization in america,

and also, and still exist today, and also is one that tried to unite women from diverse backgrounds. that was betty's and other peoples vision for it. so this is a scene in washington, d.c. at a conference where betty was actually, she wasn't attending the conference as a participant. it was a conference for women who worked for women's rights, but also were part of the government. but betty was as a journalist covering this conference. so this is the story of the founding of now. and this is in 1966. at the washington hilton between june 28 and 30, this conference

targets for action aimed to continue the work done by the president's commission on the status of women under jfk. but the first day discourage the female delegates and betty who cast her in isa co-author the commission report had invited as a journalist. late in the afternoon it started to rain so the group convened in east room instead of the rose garden. standing next to ladybird, president johnson begin by addressing the distinguished and very attractive delegates. he took credit for title vii recommended that the women expanded their volunteerism and joked about his wife's interests in the grass in the rose garden. he listed accomplishments of the commission as as a women's ey had been achieved and quote figuratively padded our heads, friedan recalled. the next day the national

women's party out of paul's organization, to introduce a resolution to bring the equal rights amendment under consideration -- alice paul's -- they were refused. surely irritated friedan invited a group of women to her room at the washington hilton that night. murray joined as the dorothy haner and carolyn davis of the women's department of the united auto workers. friedan had met them while researching her still uncompleted second book. there was also katherine, head of the wisconsin commission on the status of women, mary eastwood and katherine conroy who worked for the communication junior. conroy and others wanted to work through existing channels by introducing a motion condemning the equal employment opportunity commission. murray, , armed with a yellow legal pad, sided with friedan activist approach. at about 11 p.m. nancy nack a

young dean of university of wisconsin sitting on the floor dared to wonder if the world needed a new women's organization. friedan shouted, who invited you? get out. get out. this is my room and my liquor. [laughing] >> thank you, rachel. you can see why people not very often did not like betty friedan, and founder difficult. rachel, , why should we care abt betty friedan today? >> so as you enumerated in your introduction, beatty road the "e feminine mystique" which is one of the most important feminist books of the 20th century, if not the most important one. "the feminine mystique" was just as you noted a huge, huge

bestseller of what it did was it established women as a category, which at the time simply did not exist. so you could say that betty really through the first shot, right, which many of the people then picked up. so that's thing number one is "the feminine mystique." and they number two, the national organization for women as i said this was an amazing organization. nothing like it existed. and the goal was to combine, again to unite women as a category and have women be able to agitate for a quality of pay, the quality of representation and other things like that. and then also betty went on in the rest of her life to found many, many other organizations devoted to women in women's

rights including the national women's political caucus which was solely devoted to getting women into government. but she also been founded a women's bank, a women's think tank, i mean she just was tireless in her pursuit of women's rights and trying to get equality for women. so i think we need, she's important because we need to remember how long the struggle for women's rights has been going on in this country, and as some of the rights that betty fought for our being turned back. and it's also important because i think she, what people pay attention to most of all is her temper. and not the things that she achieved and ideas that she had. >> do you find that young women that you meet and your students don't think about her, dell --

>> yes. some cases are not even heard of her. >> so a fight in general betty is much less read "the feminine mystique" is much less read in universities now than even ten years ago. "the feminine mystique", well, those written in 63, as you said, so it's 60 years old this year. but many women in gender studies programs do not teach it, or they teach one chapter of it. sometimes taught in history programs but then it's really taught, it's often taught, i thought the loudest wins about this and is often taught in conjunction with some later book as a corrective. so to show what betty did that was wrong, you know? as a city with most important thing is she showed to a mass audience how important women's rights were.

>> so what do the current gender studies people think she got wrong and it did wrong, whato they object to? >> well, so many, many things. i mean, most of all though i would say the lack of "the feminine mystique" was really a book about white house wife's. it was the suburbs and how women felt accidentally trapped in the suburbs. so there been a number of books and, famous books contains essays, famous correctives talking about how bad he should have been more inclusive in her construction of women. but, of course, she was writing in this book in the late '50s, is one thing, and pre-civil

rights. and i i would say that, i mean, i do want to save my defense but my response instead of the critics is that no one was writing about race and class in that way, in the way that we now consider basically normal. so one thing is her lack of talking about race and also, she did we talk about poor women. she thought that revolution of women had to start in the middle class. that was her argument. and then another problem with the book a lot of critics have pointed out is that it also is you could argue you could say it's homophobic. there certain passages of if it takes a very 1950s freudian approach to gay men specifically, and that really, that criticism really dogged her. >> so do you think the gender

studies crowd are engendering a disrespect for betty? >> yes. >> and is that -- that's a dangerous thing? >> in my opinion it is. i don't think we can use the standard of today to judge a work that was written up pre-civil rights, pre-sexual revolution, pre-stonewall. that's why i said that he really through the first shot. and i was extraordinarily difficult to do. i think you can tell, i read this passage and it's funny, right, but i believe she acted in this way because she was really intent on getting people to hear her message. she felt the only way to do that was to yell or to screen. i mean, right? that's what she believed. i think she had a kind of righteousness to her about this,

and she was just not going to back down and she was not going to be polite. she was not going to be civil. she was not going to obey roberts rules and meaning, you know? but i think she felt she could not do that. she could not. >> so a lot of young women today all i want to betty friedan. >> absolutely. when you think about 60 years ago and the things that women didn't have, women couldn't open a bank account by themselves. there's a whole long list. there was discrimination in job hiring. obviously there was widespread sexism in office culture and workplace culture. so betty was constantly fighting this idea that women don't even need to be equal. why do you need that? why do you want that? she would go on these talk shows in the early '60s. it was the advent of television and the announcers would just

ridicule her and humiliate her. >> terrible. so all the writing about betty that went before your book, what was the tone of it and how is your book a different take on betty? >> well, so i really try to i think the main thing is the other to make major biographies written in the 1990s. there was one written by a journalist and then there was one written by a scholar. the one written by the scholar -- both of you are quite critical of her in these ways of describing. what i try to do is choose be fair to her. i would say that they were writing in the 1990s when she was still alive. so they had to interview her anybody who's ever written biography, that's a sort of mixed blessing if the subject is still alive. and so i think both of them, they did the interview her and in both had to struggle.

she had a clear idea about how she wanted to be remembered and water legacy was. and if you did not fall into line with that, she would just really give it to you. i have read these transcripts, previous biographers. several people then after these biographers gave up writing about it because she was so difficult. >> were they meant? >> one was a man and the others were women. so both the genders. but so the main thing that a really tried hard to do in the book was just be fair to her and to not judge or calm her outbursts. she had these outbursts, and i try to write about those and i tried to understand the as opposed to judge them which is what i think the job of a biographer is. >> dt respond very badly to what was written about her after she

cooperated with the biographers? >> yeah, she had different responses to the two biographies, very different. the biography by the scholar which is very detailed, very meticulous, he had a specific theory about her which is that she suppressed her, when she was writing "the feminine mystique" she called herself a a housew. she wasn't just writing about other people. she also called herself a housewife, and the problem that had the name, that's what she called this, middle-class women had but she also come she described herself as having this problem. this biographer claim that she exaggerated the extent to which she was a housewife. he pointed out that she'd been a radical journalist in the '40s. she had been provided for women's magazines in the '50s, and so he, , according to an she

covered up the career in order to exaggerate her identity as a housewife. she did not like that at all. she did not care for that at all in she tried to sue him. she tried to stop the book. she did not succeed, and you know the book came out and she became very worried about her legacy, and then she published a memoir which was terrible, i'm sorry, it was really bad. is that a great memoir. it's not insightful in the way you what an memoir to be. but the main thing, , the purpoe for of the memoir was to show that this particular biography gotten it all wrong about her. >> that's usually a housewife. >> she was a housewife. i would you say she was also -- the biographer was right in the sense she was a radical journalist, and she was, she was a writer for women's magazines and she was very active. however, she felt like a housewife and she was living in

upstate new york in rockland county and she had three children and shut this enormous house that her husband went into the city, commute into the city. so despite the fact she did have the somewhat active career she also at the time this was a 50s, she was asked to be a housewife and it was still confined to live in a suburban she felt, so to me with this, with the previous mark for mrs. is just that what she felt, which was trapped. she felt trapped. >> a lot of women at the time including she understood those women. >> and voiced what they were feeling and so they felt, the reason the book was a hit was because women read the first paragraph which isn't this amazing paragraph describing what it's like to wrap peanut butter sandwiches and syndicate off to school or whatever, and how mindnumbing that is. the last thing is, and you're not alone.

women read that and they felt, he felt seen. >> where did the phrase problem has known income from? did she coined that phrase? >> yes, yes she coined it. i don't know, i don't know where, she had a gift for the kind of snappy thing, you know. >> with rachel, do you think that a brand of feminist is still valid today. >> is yes. >> whitey think it is? >> i mean, i think because the things she fought for, , like equality of pay and equality in political representation and -- childcare, universal federally funded child care and reproductive rights. those are all things we don't have. to me she had it right actually. she had a lot right although she was not perfect, she was not a saint, right, but she had this idea that women were equal in

the deserved equal everything. we still don't have that. >> what was her relationship with gloria steinem and the other leading feminist of the day? of course gloria still around here did you talk to gloria? >> very briefly. gloria did not really want to participate in the book. the reason being that glory and betty did not speak after 1972. what happened was after the national organization for women was found it very quickly became radicalized and a lot of younger women flooded into it and they were very interested in what we would call now identity politics and what betty called sexual politics, , and they were less interested in betty's vision of feminism and equality and bourgeois. they were radicals. betty was very alienated from this pencil gloria was more in

that camp. glory was 12 years younger than betty. she was interested in identity politics and i would be remiss also if i didn't mention gay women's struggle to come out and to be counted in that women's movement. betty really did that support that. she thought that it would weaken the women's movement. this was around 1969, where as gloria and a lot of the other younger feminist did support that pics of betty will you l yourself on the other side any more conservative i guess i would say place. >> with the housewives g peanut butter sandwiches. >> right, right. >> so was there a bloke with gloria steinem? >> yes. >> can you tell us all a bit about the blowup? >> there were a number of

things. betty, , whenever i guess i woud say less attractive sides was that she would speak to the media disparagingly about other people, including gloria. this begin happen in 1971 and 1972, and so betty was on the record as saying gloria steinem has no ideas, you know. she's a felony, that kind of thing. and obviously gloria didn't like that. and gloria never responded. she was very, she took the high road i guess i would say, but she obviously they could work together as allies. >> so gloria never denounced the betty? >> no. betty denounced gloria and that sort of boomeranged on to betty. >> can you tell us that some of the other controversies that

betty was involved with? >> yeah. probably the two that are best known and the most i don't know widely on whatever, the one that i mentioned about gay women and that erupted in 1969 when betty used the phrase lavender menace at a national organization for women meeting and other what she thought that women lesbian women who wanted to be counted equally or who wanted their identity to be brought much more to the forefront of national organization for women, she thought that she call them the lavender -- i'm and laughini know it's not funny in the sense you know it's not very nice, but what she was concerned about was the women's movement the weekend. that i think the other day controversy erupted when she did later apologize for the lavender

menace. the other day controversy was in 1972 when she was working as a delegate for shirley chisholm, and she talked about, she wrote a press release in which she told everybody that they were going to have a traveling watermelon feast in harlem, okay? it was leaked to the beady and, of course, it was a disaster because it's terrible that she would say that. so those are two really big, horrifying things that she did. >> does a pretty big and pretty horrifying. how did you get involved in writing this book? >> it was a commission. they asked me, yale aspi but that's a little clip really. how i got involved in it was on the 50th anniversary of "the feminine mystique" i wrote an article for the chronicle of higher education which is a newspaper for scholars, and the

article was about kind of i actually have ever read "the feminine mystique" as a student. and so i read it for the first time been, and at the time the right number of books coming out, like one of them was at the end of men and then there was another one by naomi wolf. these books, i read these books and he felt that those books took from betty's ideas or refuted betty's ideas but without ever mentioning betty's name. and benefit "the feminine mystique" and i was blown away by it. it's very gorgeously written, although isis said it has these problems but it is very gorgeously written. as i wanted to write something about that. i wanted to write a betty hess kennedy raced despite having written this powerful book. people really like the essay, and so yeah, so they asked me to

write for this series this book. that's how would happen. >> what was your idea of betty when you started the book, and how did he fall, change over the course of writing it? >> i don't know that it had, , f course i read the other biographies and i was sort frustrated by them, and anything the first thing that happened was i soared to interview people, and everybody had a negative story to tell about betty. i felt a little bit defensive of her because everybody, people remembered, had held grudges like that were 60 years old. so i was very interested. obviously again she had this just what don't want to call it? like a knack for really speedy making people angry? >> making people upset. she had a knack for upsetting

people. >> getting her own way. >> , getting her own way or whatever. and so those stories accumulated, and then as a way into the archives though i saw another side of her. there was like a really generous side. she could be extraordinarily generous especially to younger women who she dash to shut some women who were her surrogate daughters who she really just helping many, many ways. she could really, she could be very generous and very kind. i think, so yeah, i begin to get this fuller picture of her, although as someone who is very kind of uncomfortable with other people, right? i don't think although she was in the public eye all the time i don't think she really liked being in the public eye. she actually said when -- she was asked to leave now picture as to be the first president of that and she said she had a

writers temperament and she did want to do it. the women many of the women were trying to kind of get women's things started wanted to do because she was a huge name. she really hesitated. she thought of herself most as a writer and journalist, for sure. >> what was relationship like with her own family, with her husband and children? >> yes. well, so our marriage was very tempestuous and violent. she married someone who was not, i would say he was not really her intellectual equal. i mean, she was a brilliant person. maybe i have said that our stress that enough. she was really, when she was in school at smith she want all the awards. she was a dazzling intellect. she went to berkeley for one

year to grad school to get a phd and then she dropped out to become this radical journalist. but in those days she was like 25 or something and you had to get married. you couldn't cut it was very hard for women to could not get married so she married this guy who was kind of i don't know he just it was not a good match. he was kind of like i don't know what kind of guy -- but anyway, they fought all the time and the drink a lot. everyone drank of course. so it was violent and everyone knew that. betty was always, this was a sort of tragic thing about her. she worried worried worried that this would come out, that people would learn of the violence in a and it would discredit the women's movement. >> would you say it was violent, did he beat her up? >> he hit her and she hit him. he went both ways and there are stories about this in the media going back to 1970.

it's really quite amazing. so it was known that people can use something dropped and people would really talk about it. like she went one time thea protest at the oak room in new york, and she had a black eye took so she was late and finally she had a friend help her with her makeup and she got there and she just was late and terrified that people would see it. and again she would be discredited and everything he had worked for so hard would be, would fall apart. their marriage was contemptuous and is very painful to our that it failed. she got divorced in 1971 and she was never come she had several lovers but she never, she never married anybody. >> what was a relationship like with her children? >> okay. her children, ship three children and that all a very successful.

i will say that. she was not, you know, there were certain things, this is true for her and her husband carl. they were fighting. you have to put that in the backdrop. but also they were certain ways that they were really amazing parents. like they like conduit go out into the backyard and look at sputnik. that kind of thing. like they were very, they were intellectually curious peers. they were always with her children. but there were other ways she was a terrible mother by many standards, like she sent the kids to school in a taxi is one famous story, all the time to click she would never take them to school. when she was writing she would close the door and it would knock on the dork mommy mommy and she would not answer because she was writing. that kind of thing. but adel, i do want to paint her as completely terrible mother because there also were these amazing things.

she allowed them to kind of be themselves, be their own people in this way does not in fashion that at all. i think each of them reflects that now. >> did she have a good relationship with them when they grew up in her later years? >> later. i mean, you know, you know, it was difficult i mean because in the early years it was so -- they would eat -- ate a lot of tv dinners, that kind of thing tv dinner sounds like a great thing for kids. i would love that. okay. one is a very successful physicist. >> one is a macarthur genius grant when he would physicist. one is an engineer and architect and another is a doctor. so they are all very successful. they all have their own children. yeah. >> in the day cooperate with you on this biography? >> i interviewed all of them, so

they did, i mean, i think they have their own like the children of many well-known people, they have their own ideas about what should be told and what should not be told. >> did they help you in your thinking about betty? >> somewhat. i mean he got to point were i knew more than they did, do you know what what it means? i'm not trying to be arrogant or anything but their knowledge was circumscribed by the fact they were her children and i was always, that's just at the forefront. >> have they read the book yet? >> i don't know. i don't know. >> will be interesting if you change their view of their mother. >> indeed. >> and so much as happened recently. >> yes. yes. >> there have been so many setbacks. >> yes. >> what would betty think of all this? >> when she was at the end of her life she was, she was upset

at the end of her life because there was so much work to be done and she knew it, and there had been, , she died in 2006 answer there have been these big setbacks in the '90s, like during the bush and reagan years. she was very upset about that, so i cannot but feel that she would be very upset now and not a day goes by these days i don't read something that is, like i just read about five female professors suing vassar college for gender discoloration, , or there's a need u.n. report about how we not going to the gender equality by 2030 or there's not a day goes by where i don't read something that there's just, proves we've not done it. we have failed. >> did she continue writing to the end of her life? >> yes, yes. >> what was the nature of providing towards the end of her life? >> at the end of her life, so

she, so in the '70s she wrote a collection called it changed my life which a lot of people didn't like because they felt that she had hollowed credit for the women's movement. and then she wrote something called in 1982 she what something called the second stage which is about how the women's movement has to become humanism. again she thought that the women's movement as it was was too radical and she wanted to partner with men. she wanted, she wanted it to be more economically based and so on. people also did not like that book. it was just widely denounced. people called her a a neocon d stuff, and then, in she wrote a book, a big, big book in 1993 about aging. she really wanted that book to be a paradigm like "the feminine mystique."

i don't think that, i have very mixed feelings about that book. it's really gigantic for one thing, and for another, it is some amazing things in it like it points out that one of the things that really changed is people living longer and that changes the gender dynamic. like she is very good on that. there are certain sections of the book where she talks about people having third acts in their lives if you live long enough and if they're in good health. the book didn't, it was okay received, not tremendously like celebrated or endorsed. there are a number of reasons for that. one is she had accumulated all of this baggage herself so it would be impossible for unknown quantity to have like a second big success. but also by the time by 1993 she herself was not in good health.

she had a number of different health problems and as a book was coming out it was ironic this book an aging and how you could have a third act and all that and she was really struggling. she had like south replacement, heart valve replacement. >> did she soften her views on gay and lesbian radical feminist at all? >> i mean, in 1977 she apologized for the phrase a lavender menace. but i think at the end of her life i think she believed that identity politics was not the way to go for women, and that there should be kind of this more economic base feminism. that would be like the correct thing to do. i don't know about softening. i do know people who knew her or had to do with her after the

open-heart surgery, , the valve replacement, did say she was nicer after the valve surgery. i think she got, i forget, she had two valves replaced. she didn't just have one, and one i think was from a teenage boy. so after that, according to some people she change her personality quite a bit. >> became interested in playing video games? >> i don't know. she became i don't know nicer. some people did say that. >> are there young feminists today who do celebrate her and embrace her and her brand of feminism? >> you know, i've been writing, i have met a few people who are reading the book, "the feminine mystique", for one reason or another were very excited about it. they tend to not be in the academy. the arches journalist or ordinary people.

and so yes, i think people read "the feminine mystique" and they get excited by the language, the strength of the book and stuff like that but i don't feel like it's come i don't know if it is a widespread movement. >> "the feminine mystique", it's been a long time since i read about it seemed to me very welcoming and very inviting. >> it is. >> that is very different from betty's personality. >> yes, yes. she kind of indicts herself in "the feminine mystique." she talks about how she was in part to blame for some of the things that happened because as a journalist she had done what editors wanted to narrow, some of her stories so they would choose the field housewife, that canvassing. so she put a herself right ate center of it and that strategy makes it very inviting. >> well, we would love to hear your questions. i'm sure rachel will be eager to

answer any questions you have. >> i'm old enough to have seen the term feminism, feminist evolve. where do you think it is today? are people using -- i mean, obviously there is a movement and things but the term itself -- >> the phrase feminism. i think it's next honestly. i'm not sure. i feel like sometimes i feel like that phrase is in disrepute, you know? people don't want to be characterized as feminists. and then other times i feel like there are feminists and their talk about feminism. but don't feel like it's strong way when i read about betty in the '60s and '70s. that was like i don't feel like

it's like that. >> i don't know if they still think of men hating, like i consider myself in the late '70s. >> yeah. >> but i've seen that. no, i'm all for this but are t using the term. >> ready never burned her bras and shacks ago very upset never anyone would talk about that. and she loved men also. she was very, could be quite flirtatious and wanted men to be part of the women's movement, but not every feminist did as you pointed out. the were many radical feminists who are either separatists of the things. >> questions? other questions? step up to the microphone. >> thank you. what a wonderful discussion. could you say something about her as a writer in the style of her polemic and what propelled

her her writing and clicked with readers? and may be in that, this might be out of left field but there's a kind of growing literature about the disaffection animate in american suburbia at the time period there's gentleman agreement, revolutionary road, you know, and taking on suburbia. >> yes. you mean in the 1950s? in general, not just for women that there was this general idea that the suburbs was this deadening place and we had to escape it to be individuals, yes. she was influenced by a lot of those people. she was very influenced by hiroshima also, that book. and she wanted, she actually

wanted "the feminine mystique" to be like hiroshima. you want it to be this very i don't know regular account of how women were suffering because of this existential problem. that was one of her models and ten manos. the feminine sissy is a strange book because it has that side of it of the critique of suburbia but then also has a more memoir-ish and self-help side of it. and sometimes those two sides seen in opposition. great question. >> we have -- know? we need to be done. >> we need to be done. >> we have run out of time rachel would be delighted to

sign your book. >> i would. >> and their for sale outside on the table out there. she will be at the table right there to sign for you. >> gioia, thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> c-span now is a free mobile app featuring pure your und view of what's happening in washington live and on-demand. keep up with today's biggest events with life streams before proceeding in hearing some u.s. congress, white house events, the courts, campaigns and more from the world of politics. all at your fingertips. you can also stay current with the latest episode of "washington journal" and fine schedule information for c-span's tv networks in c-span radio app list of write a compelling podcast. c-span now isabel at the apple store in google play. download it for free today. c-span now, your front row seat to washington anytime anywhere.

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